It has just been announced that Orbital are to reform for a headlining gig at next years Big Chill Festival (2009)......I didn't go last year, as my wife and I had a baby son.....but now i'm thinking this could be his Baptisim into the world of festivals......and what a baptism !! Original Ravers....bring on Chime.

"The Big Chill are delighted to announce that Orbital, the grandmasters of English electronica, are reforming to headline The Big Chill festival in August 2009. Celebrating 20 years of roof-raising rave anthems and cinematic techno symphonies, the fraternal duo of Paul and Phil Hartnoll will play one of their legendary live sets at Eastnor Castle next summer.

Contemporaries of the Chemical Brothers and Underworld, Orbital enjoyed a dazzling 15-year stint before bowing out gracefully four years ago. Raised in suburban Sevenoaks, near the M25 orbital motorway which inspired their name, Paul and Phil began honing their unique brand of homegrown electro long before the acid house boom gave British pop a much-needed kick up its baggy trousers. In their secret sound laboratory, these twin Timelords of techno produced gleaming machine-music classics that sounded like Blade Runner on a Grange Hill budget.

Between 1989 and 2004, Orbital released a string of addictive, eclectic singles including Chime, Style, Belfast, The Box and Satan. Many became evergreen club anthems. Some even became top three hits. During their seven-album career they also worked with an impressively diverse range of collaborators including electro-folk siren Alison Goldfrapp, soundtrack maestro Angelo Badalamenti and Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammet.

Meanwhile, Orbital developed an enviable live reputation, playing knockout mega-shows to huge crowds from Glastonbury and Woodstock, to the Royal Albert Hall. Their music featured on high-profile film scores including The Saint, Event Horizon and The Beach. They also remixed superstar artists including Madonna, Queen Latifah and their all-time robo-pop heroes Kraftwerk.

Chime Live at Glastonbury....

Since releasing their swansong Orbital opus The Blue Album and disbanding in 2004, both Hartnoll brothers have ventured into new musical territory. Paul took a more orchestral direction with his 2007 solo album The Ideal Condition, while Phil launched his short-lived collaboration project Long Range and carved a thriving career as a DJ. But they never closed the door on Orbital, and demand remains high for their fabled live shows.

“We’ve never said never,” Paul explains. “It’s something I suspected would happen, which is why we kept hold of certain key bits of odd equipment. We know Guy and Pete and various people from the Big Chill, we’ve both played there in our solo capacities and both liked it. There have been slight rumblings about getting back together before but it didn’t feel good. This time it just felt right.”

Orbital’s live comeback will coincide with the 20th anniversary of their debut single Chime, a rave-era classic recorded for less than £100, which cracked the Top 20 and earned Paul and Phil the first of many Top of The Pops appearances - wearing Anti Poll Tax T-shirts, naturally. But the brothers insist the Big Chill show has nothing to do with nostalgia for the Summer of Love.

“It’s not an exercise in nostalgia at all, the time just seems right,” says Phil. “They came to us with the offer, and everything just seemed to fall into place. I’ve played at the Big Chill before, I DJed there and played with Long Range, and had a really good time. It’s a lovely festival. Also the timing seems good: 20 years of being together.”

Headlining a musically adventurous outdoor festival like the Big Chill makes perfect sense for Orbital, whose magical Glastonbury appearances in the mid 1990s dazzled dance and rock fans alike. Their 1994 Glasto show even earned a Q magazine rating as one of the Top 50 gigs of all time.

Always leaving room for improvisation on stage, unlike many electronic acts, Paul and Phil are world-class experts at building up large crowds into a frenzy of excitement. Their offstage manner may be deadpan and low-key, but their live performances are orgies of sensory overload and revved-up euphoria. Their perfectly placed samples of Bon Jovi, Belinda Carlisle, The Darkness and Ian Dury always raise loud cheers too. Even at their triumphant peak, Orbital never forget their sense of humour.

“Audience reaction is part of the process,” Paul explains, “It really becomes like a friendly football match between you and the crowd. That was always one of our strong points - and for people to say that about an electronic band is a real honour, because it’s the one genre of music that’s normally crap live.”

Paul and Phil are still working out the details of their Big Chill performance, but they guarantee their trademark torch glasses will make an appearance. Innovative video visuals, another Orbital strong point, will also be part of the mix. The musical selection, meanwhile, will be wall-to-wall anthems. No new tunes, no jazz odysseys.

“We’ve got 15 years of active service, making songs,” Paul says. “If you boil that down to a 90-minute festival set you should get something thoroughly good from beginning to end. Let’s put some fun back into it.”

As their 20th anniversary looms, the time feels right for Orbital to reclaim their techno-pop throne. During their short sabbatical, the musical pendulum has swung back towards their electronic sound, with the rising tide of so-called New Rave artists helping to inspire a younger generation of glowstick-waving club kids. Bands like Klaxons and Hot Chip, says Paul, “have rekindled an interest in all things fluorescent and ravey.”

There’s New Rave, there’s Old Rave, and then there’s Orbital. Get ready for a legendary comeback....." (Big Chill Website)

Sunday, 23 November 2008

When the island of Bermuda is mentioned you think of the affluent north Caribbean paradise with its tourism, pink sandy beaches - and the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. But the only mystery we’re concerned with here is not the loss of ships and planes to extraneous forces, but how such incredible music as that recorded by The Invaders ever got to be recorded in such an exotic location?"

"Psychedelic funk is not the first thing that springs to mind when the subject of Caribbean music comes up. With the nearest land mass to Bermuda being North Carolina, perhaps it was the raw funk of Carleen & the Groovers or The Soul Drifters that found its way over the airwaves to infuse itself on the minds of the local musicians? Either way, back in the early ‘70s producer Eddy Demello heard what he remembers as “the hottest group on the hotel circuit. They were way ahead of their time”. He told me he wanted to “try something different and give them a chance”, and so he got the band together and recorded a couple of 45s and a long player. The band obliged and put down ten songs in total, all of them hard and heavy funk pieces and drenched in a loud, psychedelic reverb. The guys were very happy with the result - Demello pressed 3000 copies of the LP, and apart from some which were shipped to a small distributor in Paramus in the US, they were all destined for sale only in Bermuda. However, despite initial sales being bright, few people were interested in buying vinyl records, and so Eddy had to get rid of them, selling them on the street and at church bazaars. He even left some in a box on his doorstep with a “FREE” notice to anybody who wanted one!

So with LP sales all at sea, the album was eventually all washed up like lost driftwood on the beach. However, always on the lookout for salvaging lost gems, we at Jazzman spotted the SOS and launched a rescue party – let’s all welcome back The Invaders!" (Jazzman Records)

Byard Lancaster - Funny Funky Rib Grib LP (Kindred Spirits)

"Originally released in 1974 via Jef Gilson's Palm Recordings, Funny Funky Rib Grib may be something of an obscurity, but it's most deserving of its reissuing by Dutch label Kindred Spirits. You'd have a job categorising this one. While ostensibly it's a jazz record, Lancaster and his ensemble are hardly ones to fixate on a single genre, and so in addition to encountering the straight up swing and flailing funk of 'Dogtown' there's a quality to 'Loving Kindness' that's at once suggestive of George Gershwin and old-time spirituals. Also, there are some truly mindblowing guitar licks on 'Work And Pray' - a real technical tour de force accompanying a contrapuntally languid, bluesy vocal". (Boomkat Records)

Picked up the 6th release in the 7x7 series from All City Records in Ireland.

"His 6x7 release is an odd mix of tracks. "Star Crackout" is a beat-less psychedelic adventure full of crackles and pops. While these tracks may seem out of the ordinary, the strong amount of creative energy and forward thinking that Hudson Mohawke displays through each is quite exciting. Watch out for his Warp release as well as a new Heralds of Change album due out early '09." (themusiclobby.com)

"Yet more astral beat projections from the mind of one half of Heralds of Change, with Hudson Mohawke offering up one his most sublime productions to date for the sick All City 7" series. 'Star Crackout' initially sounds like the decimated love child of Kraftwerk and Daedelus, before slowly burning into an insanely smart shoegaze vibe with what could be a campfire crackle, or possibly the march of a thousand penguins swamping the whole thing into a psychedelic mush worthy of Paavoharju. This is spine tinglingly brilliant stuff, check the samples and get the feeling. 'Root Hands' dips deeper yet with a throbbing bass lead groove that sounds like Theo Parrish jamming with Boards Of Canada and mixed by Moritz von Oswald, high praise in anyone's books, but final track 'Everyone Else is Wrong' manages to fly off on yet another unique tangent with a purest mind trip into 2030 electro funk, and a place where robots smoke pure THC and eat liberty caps for breakfast. Absolutely essential, next-level gear." (Boomkat Records)

Sharon Jones - "How Long Do I Have to Wait" (Ticklah Remix) (Daptone Records DAP-1040)

"This reggae version of a Dap-Kings' favorite is really TERRIFIC! Reggae mastermind TICKLAH (AKA Victor Axelrod, AKA Earl Maxton) has re-cast Sharon's vocals to the beat of his own drum, and it feels So Right! He's taken the original raw tracks from the Dap-Kings' "Naturally" sessions down to his basement laboratory and put some of his Classic-Reggae-Evil-Genius shit all over it. Oh, he played it all on this one: drums, bass, echo-plex. He's got his hooks hitched, his pockets stitched, his mind switched, and this mix is fixed! It's RAW. It's HEAVY. It's RIGHT NOW. So spark that doobie and put your red, black, and green beanie on your turntable, cause this record is going On Your Head!" (Daptone Records)

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